It had been a race between Garibaldi and the Piedmontese. “If we do not arrive at the Volturno before Garibaldi reaches La Cattolica,” Cavour had said, “the monarchy is lost, and Italy will remain in the prison-house of the Revolution.”[16] Fortunately for his policy, the red-shirts had encountered a formidable obstacle to their advance in the Neapolitan army entrenched on the Volturno under the guns of Capua. On the 19th of September the Garibaldians began their attack on this position with their usual impetuous valour; but they were repulsed again and again, and it was not till the 2nd of October, after a two days’ pitched battle, that they succeeded in carrying the position. The way was now open for the advance of the Piedmontese, who, save at Isernia, encountered practically no resistance. On the 29th Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi met, and on the 7th of November they entered Naples together. Garibaldi now resigned his authority into the king’s hands and, refusing the title and other honours offered to him, retired to his island home of Caprera.[17]
Gaeta remained still to be taken. The Piedmontese under Cialdini had begun the siege on the 5th of November, but it was not until the 10th of January 1861, when at the instance of Great Britain Napoleon withdrew his Recognition of the united kingdom of Italy. squadron, that the blockade could be made complete. On the 13th of February the fortress surrendered, Francis and his family having departed by sea for papal territory. The citadel of Messina capitulated on the 22nd, and Civitella del Tronto, the last stronghold of Bourbonism, on the 21st of March. On the 18th of February the first Italian parliament met at Turin, and Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king of Italy. The new kingdom was recognized by Great Britain within a fortnight, by France three months later, and subsequently by other powers. It included the whole peninsula except Venetia and Rome, and these the government and the nation were determined to annex sooner or later.
There were, however, other serious problems calling for immediate attention. The country had to be built up and converted from an agglomeration of scattered medieval principalities into a unified modern nation. The first question Problems of the new government.
Brigandage. which arose was that of brigandage in the south. Brigandage had always existed in the Neapolitan kingdom, largely owing to the poverty of the people; but the evil was now aggravated by the mistake of the new government in dismissing the Bourbon troops, and then calling them out again as recruits. A great many turned brigands rather than serve again, and together with the remaining adherents of Bourbon rule and malefactors of all kinds, were made use of by the ex-king and his entourage to harass the Italian administration. Bands of desperadoes were formed, commanded by the most infamous criminals and by foreigners who came to fight in what they were led to believe was an Italian Vendée, but which was in reality a campaign of butchery and plunder. Villages were sacked and burnt, men, women and children mutilated, tortured or roasted alive, and women outraged. The authors of these deeds when pursued by troops fled into papal territory, where they were welcomed by the authorities and allowed to refit and raise fresh recruits under the aegis of the Church. The prime organizers of the movement were King Francis’s uncle, the count of Trapani, and Mons. de Mérode, a Belgian ecclesiastic who enjoyed immense influence at the Vatican. The task of suppressing brigandage was entrusted to Generals La Marmora and Cialdini; but in spite of extreme severity, justifiable in the circumstances, it took four or five years completely to suppress the movement. Its vitality, indeed, was largely due to the mistakes made by the new administration, conducted as this was by officials ignorant of southern conditions and out of sympathy with a people far more primitive than in any other part of the peninsula. Politically, its sole outcome was to prove the impossibility of allowing the continuance of an independent Roman state in the heart of Italy.
Another of the government’s difficulties was the question of what to do with Garibaldi’s volunteers. Fanti, the minister of war, had three armies to incorporate in that of Piedmont, viz. that of central Italy, that of the Bourbons and that of Garibaldi. Garibaldi’s volunteers. The first caused no difficulty; the rank and file of the second were mostly disbanded, but a number of the officers were taken into the Italian army; the third offered a more serious problem. Garibaldi demanded that all his officers should be given equivalent rank in the Italian army, and in this he had the support of Fanti. Cavour, on the other hand, while anxious to deal generously with the Garibaldians, recognized the impossibility of such a course, which would not only have offended the conservative spirit of the Piedmontese military caste, which disliked and despised irregular troops, but would almost certainly have introduced into the army an element of indiscipline and disorder.
On the 18th of April the question of the volunteers was discussed in one of the most dramatic sittings of the Italian parliament. Garibaldi, elected member for Naples, denounced Cavour in unmeasured terms for his treatment of the volunteers and for the cession of Nice, accusing him of leading the country to civil war. These charges produced a tremendous uproar, but Bixio by a splendid appeal for concord succeeded in calming the two adversaries. On the 23rd of April they were formally reconciled in the presence of the king, but the scene of the 18th of April hastened Cavour’s end. In May the Roman question was discussed in parliament. Cavour had often declared that in the end the capital of Italy must be Rome, for it alone of all Italian cities had an unquestioned claim to moral supremacy, and his views of a free church in a free state were well known. He had negotiated secretly with the pope through unofficial agents, and sketched out a scheme of settlement of the Roman question, which foreshadowed in its main features the law of papal guarantees. But it was not given him to see this problem Death of Cavour. solved, for his health was broken by the strain of the last few years, during which practically the whole administration of the country was concentrated in his hands. He died after a short illness on the 6th of June 1861, at a moment when Italy had the greatest need of his statesmanship.
Ricasoli now became prime minister, Cavour having advised the king to that effect. The financial situation was far from brilliant, for the expenses of the administration of Italy were far larger than the total of those of all the Ricasoli Ministry. Financial difficulties. separate states, and everything had to be created or rebuilt. The budget of 1861 showed a deficit of 344,000,000 lire, while the service of the debt was 110,000,000; deficits were met by new loans issued on unfavourable terms (that of July 1861 for 500,000,000 lire cost the government 714,833,000), and government stock fell as low as 36. It was now that the period of reckless finance began which, save for a lucid interval under Sella, was to last until nearly the end of the century. Considering the state of the country and the coming war for Venice, heavy expenditure was inevitable, but good management might have rendered the situation less dangerous. Ricasoli, honest and capable as he was, failed to win popularity; his attitude on the Roman question, which became more uncompromising after the failure of his attempt at conciliation, and his desire to emancipate Italy from French predominance, brought down on him the hostility of Napoleon. He fell in March 1862, and was succeeded by Rattazzi, who being more Rattazzi Ministry. pliable and intriguing managed at first to please everybody, including Garibaldi. At this time the extremists and even the moderates were full of schemes for liberating Venice and Rome. Garibaldi had a plan, with which the premier was connected, for attacking Austria by raising a revolt in the Balkans and Hungary, and later he contemplated a raid into the Trentino; but the government, seeing the danger of such an attempt, arrested several Garibaldians at Sarnico (near Brescia), and in the émeute which followed several persons were shot. Garibaldi now became an opponent of the ministry, and Garibaldi and Rome. Affair of Aspromonte, 1862. in June went to Sicily, where, after taking counsel with his former followers, he decided on an immediate raid on Rome. He summoned his legionaries, and in August crossed over to Calabria with 1000 men. His intentions in the main were still loyal, for he desired to capture Rome for the kingdom; and he did his best to avoid the regulars tardily sent against him. On the 29th of August 1862, however, he encountered a force under Pallavicini at Aspromonte, and, although Garibaldi ordered his men not to fire, some of the raw Sicilian volunteers discharged a few volleys which were returned by the regulars. Garibaldi himself was seriously wounded and taken prisoner. He was shut up in the fortress of Varignano, and after endless discussions as to whether he should be tried or not, the question was settled by an Minghetti Ministry. amnesty. The affair made the ministry so unpopular that it was forced to resign. Farini, who succeeded, retired almost at once on account of ill-health, and Minghetti became premier, with Visconti-Venosta as minister for foreign affairs. The financial situation continued to be seriously embarrassing; deficit was piled on deficit, loan upon loan, and the service of the debt rose from 90,000,000 lire in 1860 to 220,000,000 in 1864.
Negotiations were resumed with Napoleon for the evacuation of Rome by the French troops; but the emperor, though he saw that the temporal power could not for ever be supported by French bayonets, desired some guarantee that the France, Italy and the Roman question. evacuation should not be followed, at all events immediately, by an Italian occupation, lest Catholic opinion should lay the blame for this upon France. Ultimately the two governments concluded a convention on the 15th of September 1864, whereby France agreed to withdraw her troops from Rome so soon as the papal army should be reorganized, or at the outside within two years, Italy undertaking not to attack it nor permit others to do so, and to transfer the capital from Turin to some other city within six months.[18] The change of capital would have the appearance of a definite abandonment of the Roma capitale programme, although in reality it was to be merely a tappa (stage) on the way. The convention was kept secret, Capital transferred to Florence, 1865. but the last clause leaked out and caused the bitterest feeling among the people of Turin, who would have been resigned to losing the capital provided it were transferred to Rome, but resented the fact that it was to be established in any other city, and that the convention was made without consulting parliament. Demonstrations were held which were repressed with unnecessary violence, and although the change of capital was not unpopular in the rest of Italy, where the Piemontesismo of the new régime was beginning to arouse jealousy, the secrecy with which the affair was arranged and the shooting down of the people in Turin raised such a storm of disapproval that the king for the first time used his privilege La Marmora Ministry. of dismissing the ministry. Under La Marmora’s administration the September convention was ratified, and the capital was transferred to Florence the following year. This affair resulted in an important political change, for the Piedmontese deputies, hitherto the bulwarks of moderate conservatism, now shifted to the Left or constitutional opposition.
Meanwhile, the Venetian question was becoming more and more acute. Every Italian felt the presence of the Austrians in the lagoons as a national humiliation, and between 1859 and 1866 countless plots were hatched for their Venetian question. expulsion. But, in spite of the sympathy of the king, the attempt to raise armed bands in Venetia had no success, and it became clear that the foreigner could only be driven from the peninsula by regular war. To wage this alone Italy was still too weak, and it was necessary to look round for an ally. Napoleon was sympathetic; he desired to see the Austrians expelled, and the Syllabus of Pius IX., which had stirred up the more aggressive elements among the French clergy against his government, had brought him once more into harmony with the views of Victor Emmanuel; but he dared not brave French public opinion by another war with Austria, nor did Italy desire an alliance which would only have been bought at the price of further cessions. There remained Prussia, which, now that the Danish campaign of 1864 was over, was completing her preparations for the final struggle with Austria for the hegemony of Germany; and Napoleon, who saw in the furthering of Bismarck’s plans the surest means of securing his own influence in a divided Europe, willingly lent his aid in negotiating a Prusso-Italian alliance. In the summer of 1865 Bismarck made formal proposals to La Marmora; but the pourparlers were interrupted by the conclusion of the convention of Gastein (August 14), to which Austria agreed partly under pressure of the Prusso-Italian entente. Prusso-Italian Alliance of 1866. To Italy the convention seemed like a betrayal; to Napoleon it was a set-back which he tried to retrieve by suggesting to Austria the peaceful cession of Venetia to the Italian kingdom, in order to prevent any danger of its alliance with Prussia. This proposal broke on the refusal of the emperor Francis Joseph to cede Austrian territory except as the result of a struggle; and Napoleon, won over by Bismarck at the famous interview at Biarritz, once more took up the idea of a Prusso-Italian offensive and defensive alliance. This was actually concluded on the 8th of April 1866. Its terms, dictated by a natural suspicion on the part of the Italian government, stipulated that it should only become effective in the event of Prussia declaring war on Austria within three months. Peace was not to be concluded until Italy should have received Venetia, and Prussia an equivalent territory in Germany.
The outbreak of war was postponed by further diplomatic complications. On the 12th of June Napoleon, whose policy throughout had been obscure and contradictory, signed a secret treaty with Austria, under which Venice was to be handed over to him, to be given to Italy in the event of her making a separate peace. La Marmora, however, who believed himself bound in honour to Prussia, refused to enter into a separate arrangement. On the 16th the Prussians began hostilities, and on the 20th Italy declared war.
Victor Emmanuel took the supreme command of the Italian army, and La Marmora resigned the premiership (which was assumed by Ricasoli), to become chief of the staff. La Marmora had three army corps (130,000 men) Ricasoli Ministry. under his immediate command, to operate on the Mincio, while Cialdini with 80,000 men was to operate on the Po. The Austrian southern army consisting of 95,000 men was commanded by the archduke Albert, with General von John as chief of the staff. On the 23rd of June La Marmora crossed the Mincio, and on the 24th a battle was fought at Custozza, under circumstances highly disadvantageous to the Italians, which after a stubborn contest ended in a crushing Austrian victory. Bad generalship, bad organization and the jealousy between La Marmora and Della Rocca were responsible for this defeat. Custozza might have been afterwards retrieved, for the Italians had plenty of fresh troops besides Cialdini’s army; but nothing was done, as both the king and La Marmora believed the situation to be much worse than it actually was. On the Battle of Königgrätz. 3rd of July the Prussians completely defeated the Austrians at Königgrätz, and on the 5th Austria ceded Venetia to Napoleon, accepting his mediation in favour of peace. The Italian iron-clad fleet commanded by the incapable Persano, after wasting much time at Taranto and Ancona, made an unsuccessful attack on the Dalmatian island of Lissa on the 18th of July, and on the 20th was completely defeated by the Austrian squadron, consisting of wooden ships, but commanded by the capable Admiral Tegethoff.